Is there anything I can do to help my 37 year old brother?

Burt T Macklin wrote:

Sign In/Register wrote:

Is there anything I can do at this point to try to help him lead a better life, or am I better off cutting all ties?

Convince your father to leave the money in a trust for your brother. If a trustee is not signing off on that money it will be gone in a year.

This +1000. Surely Dad, addled as he might be, can understand wasting several hundred thousand dollars would not be a positive thing.

I think the only option is to try and get him into some sort of long term care facility. A place for people who are disabled or have mental illnesses. I am sorry for your situation. I hope you take these words to heart. Good luck

joed|rtt wrote:

P.C.P. Bach wrote:

You think taking a puff of a joint is the same thing as a meth addiction?

How do you feel about alcohol? Is that any better?

Every drug addict I knew felt booze and a joint was no big deal as well.

And every drug addict represents a very tiny percentage of people who smoke a little weed . Do you not understand that addicts are going to be addicts regardless of whether drugs are illegal or not? Smh

at all costs wrote:

joed|rtt wrote:

Every drug addict I knew felt booze and a joint was no big deal as well.

And every drug addict represents a very tiny percentage of people who smoke a little weed . Do you not understand that addicts are going to be addicts regardless of whether drugs are illegal or not? Smh

If that is the case, then why is the drug overdose rate in the US 28.3 per 100k, while the drug overdose in Singapore is closer to 0.25 per 100k. How do you think people become users and then addicts in the first place? If there is no supply, there are no deaths. In Singapore, the penalty of trafficking drugs is death, the penalty for using drugs is a $20,000 fine and rehab. In the past 15 or so years, they have executed an average of 3 individuals per year. So the execution rate is about 0.05 per 100k. So, that makes their combined overdose and execution rate 0.30 drug related deaths per 100k. Plus, there is pretty much no crime to steal to feed a drug habit, no gang activity to sell the drugs, no drug addled individuals running cars into people, etc. Get the picture?

Then move to Singapore mutha pucka. Better yet, how about South Korea? See ya.

Sorry I meant North Korea

bfef wrote:

Sorry I meant North Korea

South Korea would have worked just fine, as they have capital punishment for traffickers as well, low overdose rates, low crime rates and rising affluence. In fact, much of Asia has capital punishment for drug traffickers. No surprise, they also have extremely low drug overdose rates. Singapore is a wonderful place.

Mental illness is tough. It's easier to lose someone with terminal cancer than deal with someone with mental illness. Sometimes you just have to let mental illness play out.

Posting because what you've written above matches up with my life almost identically. I am 33 and have an older brother who is 38. He is currently in jail but will be out in about 6 months. I'll try to be concise, but there is enough to this whole story to fill a book easily.

All three of us kids had colic as babies, and my parents got advice from the doctor to just leave us in a room and let us cry it out (for hours). Through my research I think this is a big part of why all three of us are so screwed up emotionally. That combined with severe emotional neglect and dysfunctional parenting. My brother has significant ADHD, and my parents always just viewed him as a problem child and treated him badly. He developed into a literal sociopath and would abuse the heck out of me all through childhood, would torture animals, steal, had no remorse, constant hellraising, etc. Got into drugs and alcohol around age 15/16, and my parents were just like your dad: absolute poster children for being the best/worst example of enablers. Even at age 14, before I had ever heard the word enabler, I could see my parents were basically helping my brother destroy himself, our family, and anyone who got near him. It was so blatant I thought for a time that that was exactly what my parents were trying to do. I don't think they understand any of this even 20 years later.

I distanced myself from my family by moving over 800 miles away, and it's the best decision I ever made. Never had much of anything to do with my brother but then also got physical distance from my parents and stopped talking to my mom entirely in 2016. Getting away from all of that was absolutely critical (I cannot stress enough) for my own survival and development and HEALING. I worked incredibly hard on myself and fixed my complex PTSD, and I now have a better relationship with my parents and my brother as my healing somehow spilled over somewhat into the family. HOWEVER, my brother is a disaster still, and he likely won't be alive too much longer in all honesty. His brain is so badly damaged from all the drugs and alcohol... It's like he has severe ADHD, emotional instability, addiction to everything imaginable, and schizophrenia that comes and goes. Some of that was probably there all along, but it's mostly from heavy drug use over the last 16ish years. It's bad.

I am trying to do what I can to help my brother from a distance. It is not easy, and honestly, I am not optimistic. I think in all likelihood he will probably crash a car while high or drunk or something of that nature and die in the next several years. Best case scenario is likely long term prison time or being institutionalized. I TRY to be good to him though because I recognize he never got healthy love in his life from the very start, and it messed him up. A lot of his life his doing, yes, but he was given a raw deal in life, and he doesn't have the tools to fix it. I try to empathize with him, tell him I love him (even though I haven't truly loved him since I was about 12... the emotions are just dead, though I try), and I try to send him things that might help him. I am working on getting him in to see a psychiatrist now so that he can be diagnosed with ADHD and get medication, though he will have to comply with that, which he might not.

My advice to you and to anyone in any situation like ours is that you absolutely cut all ties if the person is toxic and is not receptive towards any kind of change. If the person is trying or genuinely wants to improve, there is hope, but if they do not want to get better and are bringing harm to your life, the best thing you can do for yourself AND THEM is to stay away as completely as possible. Stopping all communication with my mom was the impetus she needed to get help herself and stop being such a toxic psycho. Just understand that realistically speaking, your brother will probably not get significantly better, will die young, you will have regrets, but that life is infinitely complicated, and beating yourself up over these things doesn't change anything or make anything better. YOU be the best person YOU can be and focus your energy where it does good. That is the best advice I can give you, and that advice has changed my own life and made it infinitely better. Thank you, Jordan Peterson.

Best of luck to you, man.

Very difficult situation. Enable and they degrade and die slowly. Cut them off and they may kill themselves or die by od etc. My mom was an enabler to two of my sisters. My sisters and their kids leached off my parents living with them etc. After my dad passed, it got bad enough my mom asked me for money (due to their bleeding her dry). I finally got my mom to move in with me and agree that before she gave any money to my sister's or their kids, she had to consult with me or my brother. She mostly kept that promise. I also talked to my sister's and told them to come to me before talking to my mom. When my mom moved in with me, we used the proceeds of the house sell to get these sisters each a small place to live. They were told if you blow it and lose it, there will be no more because mom has no more and me and my brother are not going to bail them out (a spendthrift trust might have been a better idea than giving stuff directly to them). One sister did great and became self sufficient (she wasn't a druggy). The other sister went sober for several years (meth and alcohol addict) but recently has had alcohol problems. She recently quit that after her daughter about died from excessive drinking ( at a young age). Thus sister is self sufficient and working still (a miracle after many years of living off of mom) but still struggles. What helped my mom the most was telling her that when she dies, me and my brother are not going to bail her out or enable her like she had, and it is important for the sisters to learn indepenence while she can help them in a supervised manner before she dies so that they can take care of themselves after she dies-cause me and my brother were not going to do that). She agreed to that and I was the supervisor so in this case with the situations described, a lot of success came out of it. It wasn't a complete cutoff but was controlled with lots of questions asked instead of handing out money with no questions. My mom passed 5 years ago. The ex druggy sister is still pulling her weight but needs council which I try to give ( she came close to losing her place last year due to not paying taxes but she rectified that). Forcing my sister's to be responsible was a risk but it has turned out way better than what was going on.

Told mom we were not going to bail the sisters out after she dies.

You need to do whatever it is that you need to do so that when the time comes that your brother dies (and from the sounds of things, that's probably going to be the case while he's on the younger side) you feel sadness but not guilt.

There's plenty of ways you can be supportive of him, while at the same time ensuring that when he's gone you did what you could.

do n wrote:

Lots of the advice here sounds idiotic. Thinking every man responsible for 100% of destiny is the litmus test for insufficiently low IQ.

Anyway, he's blind? How is he not in a program for this?

You have never needed or will never need any help in the future. I hope we are willing to help each other as we can or humanity is pretty bleak!